Staying clothed at doctor’s best for all

Dear Miss Manners: Every year I go to the doctor for my annual prostate, anal and overall checkup. I am always offered a gown to put on.

While on the exam table, I am asked to scoot down or turn over a few times, and it is difficult with the gown on.

Would it be out of line to refuse the gown, or is it required by the doctors? I am not modest in front of my doctor, and it would be more comfortable without the gown.

I did not mention that I have a woman doctor.

Gentle Reader: Would you want naked people running around your office?

Well, doctors don’t dream of your doing so, either.

What they examine are body parts, uncovered one at a time so as to dispel any notion that they are feeling up individuals.

Before they deal with their patients as people, they tell them to get dressed.

Miss Manners assures you that this convention works to your advantage, immodest though you may be. You want your doctor to evaluate your body medically rather than aesthetically.

Dear Miss Manners: What do you think about receiving an invitation to a wedding but not the reception?

A friend and I were discussing another friend who was invited by a neighbor to a wedding for the neighbors’ daughter, but not included in the invitation was the invite to the reception.

The friend and I felt it is extremely rude to invite people only to the wedding and feel that it appears as if a gift is desired, but that the host is not interested in paying for a meal.

We both feel that if one is not close enough to be invited to the reception, they should not be invited to either.

What is your opinion on this?

Gentle Reader: That it is a fine and useful example of etiquette’s not being enslaved by tradition.

For indeed, it was once commonplace to discriminate among the guests at what were considered fashionable weddings. Some received reception cards in their invitations, and others did not.

Why the latter group did not think, “Why would I want to witness their marriage when they don’t want to see me afterward?” Miss Manners cannot imagine.

It was rude then, and it is rude now.